Basic record imports

Patient Sync (no longer in-use)

Overview of patient record imports.

• Every 30 minutes the site pc creates a listing of all patients w/ modification dates (called rss.xml), and updates any changed patient xml files (The xml files is a text file which contains the patient record in xml format).
• The main ZEPRS server has "subscribed" to the patient listing of the other pc - the rss.xml file. The import process can happen automatically - for instance, every 30 minutes - or manually. For example, when the user presses the "Import" link from the Subscriptions admin page, ZEPRS reads the remote rss.xml file and compares each patient listed in it to the lastModified field in each's patient's record on the main ZEPRS instance's database. If the remote version lastModified is not equal to the main ZEPRS version, ZEPRS downloads the remote patient xml file. The automatic process happens the same way.
• The main ZEPRS instance processes the patient xml files that were just downloaded. It processes new patients as well as changes to current patient records. It imports all visits, system generated outcomes, problems, etc.
• The caching process is automated - the clinic (remote) instance automatically creates every 30 minutes the data for the main ZEPRS instance to import, as noted in the first point.
• Each site is publishes an RSS feed for the patients whose records have been modified at the site.

This process may happen in reverse: The clinic may subscribe to the main ZEPRS feed and fetch records that had been updated for that clinic while it was offline.

How does the remote site get updates of its patient records if the record was updated at another site? The remote site feed lists all patients it is "interested" in – basically, these are all of the patients it actively manages – in its own RSS feed. The remote site subscribes to the ZEPRS master site’s feed for that particular remote site. When the remote site syncs its records, it downloads the site feed that is generated by the ZEPRS master that currently uses the same query as the remote site – select all patient records who were last modified at this remote site. This sync process compares the patient record modified dates to see if the patient record was modified on - if they differ, the system syncs the patient record.

Unfortunately, this will miss any patients whose records were updated at another site – such as transfers to UTH. So, the remote site keep a list of its patients who were not on the list from the master RSS feed and sync’s each of the missing patients.